"Arab Women in Israel: Obstacles to Emancipation"
Workers' Advice Center
http://www.wac-maan.org.il/en/article__44/arab_women_in_israel_obstacles_to_emancipation
by Asma Agbarieh-Zahalka, Michal Schwartz
This article is based on a paper that is to appear in Erella Shadmi (editor), Hazon
Isha: Nashim Borot Olamot Hadashim (The Vision of Woman: Women Create New
Worlds), in Hebrew, 2008.
JUST a few yards separate Jisr al-Zarqa from Caesarea. The former is among the
poorest villages in Israel. The latter houses the elite. Just a few yards—plus a wall
built six years ago so that the Caesarea rich would not have to see their neighbors. A
similar wall, but invisible, crosses the hyphen of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. You will find the same
invisible wall between Jewish Me-Ami and Arab Um al-Fahm, between Nazareth Ilit
and Nazareth, between Carmiel and its surrounding villages—in short, wherever
Jews and Arabs live near each other. A hair's breadth separates worlds.
Jisr al-Zarqa differs from other Arab villages in one major respect: its women are the
main breadwinners. According to sources in the local council, about 75% of the men
do not work. The consequence is that 30% of the women do, compared to only
18.6% of all Arab women in Israel 1. Jisr al-Zarqa's women are the village's basic
source of livelihood. But has their work brought them sustenance and satisfaction?
Not in the least. It is bitter drudgery, underpaid. Cleaning-company contractors from
the coastal region find in these women a convenient source of unskilled labor, weak,
desperate and cheap. They clean Tel Aviv. You will find them at the universities, the
hospitals, the old-age homes and the banquet halls. Most wind up with less than the
legal minimum wage of 3700 shekels ($1028) for a month of eight-hour days. Even
this minimum, when they get it, fails to cover the cost of living.
Each morning at 5:30, about 900 women from this village of 12,000, married and
single, mothers and not, climb into vans. Most return at 5:00 p.m., some as late as
10:00. When the day's cleaning is done they come home to clean again and take
care of the children, who've been out on the street half the day.
In Jisr al-Zarqa girls marry at 17, sometimes earlier. They live under a patriarchal
regime, even when they are the breadwinners. They raise large families, often
crowding into a single room in the multi-story house of the wider family. The average
is seven per room. The social and economic gap between them and their Jewish
neighbors widens from year to year.
Poverty is Arab and female
Jisr al-Zarqa represents, in extreme form, the general condition of Arabs in Israel.
Although they make up only 15% of the population (not counting East Jerusalem and
the Golan Heights), they are more than half the country's poor. Most of their families
live below the poverty line, including about 60% of their children.
One reason for Arab poverty is that half the Arab families have only one breadwinner.
As said, 18.6% of Arab women over age 15 are in the labor force, compared to 56%
of Jewish women (Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, Tables 1.2 and 8.1, figures for
2006).
The average wage of Arab women is 47% lower than that of Jewish women. More
than half earn the minimum wage or less, compared with a third of Jewish women
(Source: "Condition of Employment…," cited above.)
A less direct cause of poverty among Arab women is their low educational level.
About half never finished high school, compared to 10% of Jewish women. The
employment rate varies according to education. Arab women who never finished
elementary school have an employment rate of 3.6%, compared to 64.8% among
those who studied beyond high school (Ibid). There are other reasons too for their
poverty. Arab women are concentrated in low-salary fields. They are hired after Jews
and paid less for the same work.
This situation leads many Arab women to give up the job search. About 12% drop out
of the quest, compared to 1% among their Jewish counterparts (Ibid).
In February the National Insurance Institute published a report confirming that
despite the overall economic growth, poverty in Israel continues to deepen. Growth
bypasses the weak populations, Arabs especially. Poverty passes from generation to
generation, as does the lack of faith in Israeli society. These feelings found
expression in the Intifada of October 2000, which was most intense in Israel's
poorest Arab communities. It greatly increased the mistrust between Arabs and
Jews, with each side shutting itself off from the other.
Why don't they work?
Some blame Arab culture for the low rate of workforce participation among Arab
women. In the last few years, indeed, we have witnessed a surge of religion in the
villages, with the Islamic movement encouraging women to stay home and devote
themselves to bearing and raising children.
Yet the rise of conservatism on the Arab street is less the cause than the result of low
workforce participation. The cause is the discrimination and exclusion practiced
against Arabs in all walks of life. Since the mid-1990's, moreover, the problem has
been aggravated by neoliberal economics and globalization. The new Israeli
economy, focused on the stock exchange and high-tech, has disposed of the "old
economy"—and, with this, of jobs for Arab women. Their traditional sectors, namely
textiles, agriculture and nursing-care, have vanished beneath their feet.
Globalization spurred the transfer of textile plants to cheap-labor countries: Egypt,
Jordan, Romania and China. Nursing-care became the province of Filipinos.
And agriculture? This field once provided jobs for Arab women without professional
skills. Before the creation of Israel in 1948, 90% of the Arab population lived from
farming. Now the figure is 4%. Of the 50,000 farm employees in Israel today, about
half are migrants, mostly from Thailand. Deep in debt on arrival and lacking
organization, the Thais work for less than the legal minimum (a result of shady
record-keeping), do not receive social benefits, and live on the job site. They amount
to a hidden subsidy. In Europe and America too agriculture is subsidized, but there
the subsidy is directly financial and goes to the agricultural branch in general, where
it can benefit both farmers and workers. In Israel the subsidy takes the form of
human beings and goes to the farmers alone.
As for those Arab women who do work in agriculture, what is the nature of their
employment? In the Arab village there are many local subcontractors, who transport
the women to work and collect their wages, from which they skim about 40%. There
is rarely a salary slip, not to mention benefits. The workers wind up with 80 to 100
shekels for an eight-hour day—that's about $20 to $25—instead of the legal
minimum of 160 shekels.
Only deep poverty and lack of alternatives will bring a married, unskilled Arab woman
to seek a job under such conditions. The workers are usually unmarried women
trying to increase their dowries. Often their earnings are absorbed into the wider
family's budget. A family may send a few of its daughters to work for a pittance so
that they won’t sit at home. It may use their wages to pay debts or finance the older
brother's studies—or build an extra story to house his future family. Given these
circumstances, it is no wonder that work is considered a burden that the women are
glad to be rid of as soon as they can.
Today the structure of the Arab female workforce has the shape of an upside-down
pyramid: of the minority with jobs, about 70% are independent professionals in
education, health or social work, while most of the remaining 30% are non-
professionals in industry, agriculture, cleaning and other services.
The under-educated Arab women are thrice victims: they are Arabs in a Jewish state,
women in a patriarchal Arab society, and unskilled workers in a neoliberal economy.
The patriarchal family
The patriarchal family is alive and well in the Arab village. Marriage to near-relatives
is still frequent, and among the Bedouin in the Negev polygamy is common. The
Arab birth rate is higher than among Jews. The average Arab family has 4.9
members, the Jewish 3.1. To divorce, for an Arab woman, means to return to her
parents, and there is a good chance that she will lose her children. A divorcée is
under a heavy stigma. It is not considered acceptable for her to live alone, and
usually, in any case, she cannot afford the rent. There is still the practice of murder
for the sake of "family honor." These conditions hardly conduce to political or social
action on the woman's part.
The strongly patriarchal Arab family has always been a convenient tool of Israeli
governments, who use it to dominate the Arab population and keep it in a condition of
underdevelopment. An important factor in preserving the patriarchal system has been
the geographical separation between Jews and Arabs, a kind of muted apartheid.
Some 92% of the Arabs in Israel live in separate villages. This isolation shuts out the
forces of urbanization. It prevents modernization, which normally weakens the hold of
the extended family. What is more, there are no civil marriages in Israel. Weddings
are subject to the religious courts. This fact also perpetuates separation.
But that is not all. The State of Israel has been supplying ever fewer services to the
Arab villages. As a result, the Arab citizen is forced to depend on the extended
family. The land squeeze (a result of Israeli policies) is such that young couples
cannot usually rent apartments in the village. If they think of moving to a Jewish city,
they will have to cope with discriminatory policies and higher living costs. Young
couples have little choice, therefore, but to live on an upper floor of the wider family's
house, where they must accept the rule of the patriarch.
Higher education could increase social mobility, but the vast majority of Arabs are
stymied before they can reach that stage. Within the state-run educational system,
their schools are on the lowest rung, while private schools are too expensive for
most.
It is true, then, that the patriarchal Arab family implants conservative norms on the
Arab woman, and these norms keep her from working. But that is the case only when
jobs are unorganized and ill-paid. If every farm or industrial worker were to get the
minimum monthly wage of 3700 NIS, plus the legally required social benefits, the
attitude toward working women would likely change.
That attitude is very different in the mixed cities—Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Haifa, Ramle, Lod
and Akko—where 4% of Arab women live. Despite the separation of populations
within each of these, there are varied job opportunities close to home. Nearly half the
Arab women who live in these cities have jobs.
If Arabs were free to live anywhere—in every city, moshav or kibbutz—in other
words, if integration were real, then urbanization and modernization would overcome
the tendencies to withdrawal and isolation.
Role of the Workers' Advice Center
In conservative societies it is the role of women to pass the values from one
generation to the next, while embodying these values in their behavior. But when a
society undergoes a shake-up, women can become a dynamic force for change.
It is impossible to seal the Arab family hermetically against the world around it. For
instance, during the 1970's and 80's, as more women joined the labor force, their
average age at marriage increased and the birth rate dropped. Like everyone else,
Arab women are exposed to the consumer culture and to Western values. They are
painfully aware of the gap between their financial circumstances and those of their
Jewish neighbors. They suffer from this contradiction, but it cannot be resolved when
they remain stuck in underdeveloped villages without any chance of satisfying work.
As long as the possibilities for advancement fade, the women tend to reject the
values of equality and social progress. If the grapes are out of reach, they must be
sour.
Occasionally the government of Israel admits to the discrimination and declares it will
change its ways. We find this, for instance, in the Comptroller's Report for 2001, as
well as in the Orr Committee Report. Both came in response to the October Intifada.
Their recommendations remained on paper only. The Finance Ministry likewise
acknowledges day and night that the lack of employment among Arab women is the
major reason for Arab poverty. All know that the importation of migrants perpetuates
this situation. In February 2008, the Finance Ministry and the Bank of Israel
published a program to reduce the number of migrant workers by 100,000. Yet
programs are one thing, reality another.
There is, in short, a pattern. All the major forces in the lives of Arab women conspire
to oppress them: the patriarchal family, village society, the labor market, the
neoliberal government and globalization. To break this pattern, the women must
organize, and this is where the Workers Advice Center (WAC) comes in, with its
Women's Forum. We do not accept poverty and joblessness as decrees from on
high. Poverty compels Arab women to work, and they need protection of their rights.
Indeed, they need to be made aware of these rights. Exploitation, low wages and the
stigma of menial labor keep most Arab housewives from attempting to find work. We
target precisely the invisible women, the hundreds of thousands who lack training, in
order to bring them into the work process. This is an essential, if insufficient, step
toward self-empowerment. Agriculture is a natural choice: it can receive women by
the thousands.
Through WAC, housewives find work at the real minimum wage and their rights are
protected. They take part in classes for women's empowerment. We seek to prepare
them as union activists, so that they can use their experience to bring more women
into the organization. In this way the pattern can be broken, from village to village.
The break means a revolution in their financial situation and their social status, in
their self-concept and worldview. This revolution can bring about another, namely in
the male society's attitude toward women. It may even shake up the indifference of
Israeli Jews. It may help create solidarity among all victims of neoliberalism, women
and men, Arabs and Jews. It may foster, at last, a healthy dialogue between the Arab
and Jewish communities.
When we went out to test this thesis, the women at least did not disappoint us.
Housewives, mothers of four or more, women in their 30's and 40's who hadn't
worked since marriage, decided to undergo a drastic change in their lives. It wasn't
easy to convince them that they could both work and manage their households.
Because of past experience, they found it hard to believe that through WAC they
would really earn the legal minimum and get full backing in relation to the employer.
But their need to make ends meet proved decisive. The first women from Kufr Qara
went to work two years ago, in March 2006.
They rise before dawn, prepare what the children will need for school, go to the job,
cope with the farmers' demands, return home in the afternoon, clean house, help the
children with homework, prepare the next day's meals, and do laundry. All this is no
piece of cake, but those who master the art become standard bearers for the value of
organized labor. Their financial situation improves. They can register the children for
after-school activities. They can pay for a dentist or buy a computer. They can also
get out of the house, meet new women, speak in Hebrew with the boss. In short, they
begin to exert power over the forces that formerly ruled their lives. They feel their
own worth, and they can also feel a change in the way people look at them. They
also enjoy gathering one night each week, after work, in the empowerment course, to
look at their lives from different angles and with new understanding.
These empowerment groups, organized by our Women's Forum, are distinctive
because the participants are all workers, sometimes on the same farm. This
commonality has created a dynamic of closeness and trust. The Forum is also the
setting in which to confront conservative attitudes, about child-rearing for example,
and overcome prejudice.
WAC's workers get exposed to different worlds in different ways. They receive
international delegations of farm-workers' unions, talk with them and hear what is
happening in other lands. On International Women's Day and the First of May they
bring their demands to the heart of Tel Aviv, where they meet Israelis who stand in
solidarity with them, as well as Jewish women who've been harmed by government
policy. Jewish and Arab artists contribute paintings to our annual art sale, whose
proceeds are dedicated to the Arab female farm-workers of WAC. Poets visit their
villages, reading in Hebrew and Arabic. The women are exposed to forms of art that
are new to them. Through all these contacts, their struggle becomes multifaceted and
concrete. The artists and poets, for their part, are exposed to an aspect of the Arab
sector that they don't often see.
For every female Arab worker who is hired, ten are turned away, because the
farmers prefer the Thais or the unorganized women ferried in by the subcontractors.
Nevertheless, in a matter of months, the number of female farm workers joining
WAC's Kufr Qara branch rose to 100. That figure would be still higher if we could get
more job openings, for word has spread, and many new women have been knocking
on our doors. In other villages too, in the Sharon Plain and Galilee, housewives are
finding jobs through WAC and changing their lives.
A real change requires that the upside-down pyramid be set right: thousands of Arab
women, even tens of thousands, must go out to work, organized in labor unions with
other workers, in order to rescue their families and communities from the cycle of
poverty and passivity. WAC's working women will have to learn to believe in
themselves, taking action for political and social change. This liberation within Arab
society can open the way to a wider solidarity in which Jews and Arabs, males and
females, make common cause against their exploiters. Such a thing is no longer
inconceivable. From the moment that the State of Israel adopted neoliberal
economics, it ceased to worry about its poorer Jewish citizens, and one result has
been the breakdown of Zionist unity.
The workers in this process will need a political party to represent them. The
establishment of a broad movement, including Jews and Arabs, male and female,
can shake up prejudices and bring down the wall of hatred between the two peoples
on the basis of a common interest.
But change depends too on developments in the international arena, especially the
weakening of America's hold over global economics and politics. It depends on the
renewal of opposition to both extortionate capitalism and fundamentalism.
None of this will happen overnight, but the women now gathering in WAC signify a
step in the right direction.